Chatbooks, a subscription service for printed photo books, has acquired Guesterly, a company that creates pocket-sized printed event guides.
Founded in 2014, Chatbooks has raised $2.1M in seed funding, and will sell its one millionth photo book by the end of 2015.
Here’s how service works: For $8 dollars each, the startup will automatically collate photographs from across your social media platforms and print them into a 60-page memorialized photo book. Essentially, the startup wants to help you easily tell your ongoing life story via a tried and true platform – photo albums.
Now enter Guesterly, a self-funded startup based in Salt Lake City. The company connects people at events like weddings and conferences by creating a passport-sized photo roster of all attendees…basically like a physical Facebook just for your event.
So what do these two startups have in common?
Both are focused on creating and capturing memories using printed photo books as a physical medium.
One service is focused on using the medium to enhance an actual event, while the second wants to use printed books to enhance the post-event memories. Once working under one brand, its easy to see how the two services can work together to provide a unified print experience to event planners and attendees.
Chatbooks CEO Nate Quigley explained that “print enhances any experience, whether it’s a guesterly that helps you connect with new friends at a wedding or a Chatbook that lets you then effortlessly relive those amazing memories you created on the dance floor. We all want to hold on to our most important memories and relationships.”
At a time where the shift to digital is exponentially accelerating, its nice to see two successful startups embracing and finding success within physical mediums.